He had been with
the FAA since February of 1997. He said that prior to the FAA, he flew
corporate aviation for about eight years, and prior to that he was chief
pilot for a small Part 121 carrier called Viking Airlines, where he flew
Convairs and B-727s. He stated that he came to the FAA as assistant APM
in 2004 and in 2006 became APM on the A320 at Northwest Airlines. He
stated that he was typed rated on the A-320 airplane has flown the
aircraft, but has not flown the airplane in revenue or line service. He
said he had various assistants including an assistant APM who was a very
experienced A320 pilot who had previously flown for USAirways. He said
he was not involved in the Northwest/Delta merger integration team, but
would help resolve any fleet specific requests or questions the team may
have, and that occurred regarding all the fleets.

Regarding the
merger, he said he had never before been in a merger of this size and
that they were all “forging new ground” with this merger. He said there
had been major changes that had required more work, and said they had
“battles” with the company regarding procedural changes that had been
sought and rejected, but the process was “respectful and energetic”. He
said it had been a high level of work and activity for each step in the
process. He said he used to collect NTSB blue cover accident reports,
and that he learned that every large merger in history had some type of
accident associated with the merger and they voiced this concern with
the APDs, and this merger was a “huge historical risk” and they didn’t
want to participate in past history. He said that the feedback he had
received regarding this event, both before and after, was that this
event was a “one off”, and he had never heard of this happening before.

Both before the
Northwest 188 event and after, he had positive experiences with a lot of
captains who would identify the merger related issues during the
pre-flight briefing and worked to keep them out of the cockpit,. He said
that this event had nothing to do with the cockpit procedural changes
that had been recently implemented. He said that the distraction was an
effect of the merger, but was not anything related to the phased in
procedural changes.

He stated that he
did not know the incident pilots personally, and did not recall if he
had been on an observation ride with them.

He said there was
no audible tone associated with the ACARS message, and was not aware if
there was an option for it. He said he asked a USAirways pilot if they
had that option, and was told they did not have that option as well.

Regarding pilot
morale, he said that it had been “fairly positive”, but he had heard
some antidotal evidence of pilots who had some seniority concerns, but
had not heard anything personally.

When asked how
each phased change was communicated to the pilots,, he said that the
pilots would receive the manuals three weeks prior to the procedure
change, and would also receive an overview of each change. He said that
pilots were also required to participate in online “distributed
training” for each phase change. They were paid for the training, and
failure to complete the training would prevent them from signing on for
a particular trip. He said that he “believes” that the language in the
Northwest FOM regarding the prohibition of laptops in the cockpit prior
to the merger was identical to the current language.

He stated that he
did not know about the A320 MEL 23-24-01B that references an “ACARS
chime”, but believed it might be a part of the software changes to the
flight warning computer (FWC).

He said that there
was no consideration from the FAA office regarding merger related
changes that effected vacation, bidding and pay issues. He said that he
receives an overview of the line operations reviews, and had not seen
any ALPA feedback forms that were shared with the company. He said that
the phase 4 implementation was still scheduled for January 1, 2010 and
that there was no discussion of delaying it. He stated that FAA was
briefed on a December 15, 2009 “Pilot Orientation Part 2”, but it was
not an FAA mandated deadline.